CharmingCharlie

Note : I believe this is acceptable practice, I am not linking directly to the scans but linking to a an external story that is showing the scans. Many apologies to the mods (well everyone except Waddy ) if this is in error.

Minic

I'm really hoping someone will put up full and readable pages soon, i'd love to read the article properly than see a summary of what's in it, plus less blurry screenshots would be nice. I'm just wondering what faction those troops belong to, they're most definitely human/humanoid, but why're they fighting Shepard and co?

CharmingCharlie

I'm really hoping someone will put up full and readable pages soon, i'd love to read the article properly than see a summary of what's in it, plus less blurry screenshots would be nice. I'm just wondering what faction those troops belong to, they're most definitely human/humanoid, but why're they fighting Shepard and co?

I had a look through the pics and I can only think of two possibilities. Firstly they could be Cerberus troops we have been told that TIM wants Shepard dead so it is possible that he could send troops after Shepard (hell I would send a whole battle fleet myself and still not be certain I would win). Alternatively it could be Alliance soldiers sent to "capture" Shepard and bring him/her to trial. I know that Shep does say they will come in "voluntarily" but things change.

mrpain

Argh crawled through the Bioware Social Forums for more info of ME3. That place is a mess!

Found nothing but read a topic about the Illusive Man. One of the things I'm looking forward once I get the game is meeting the Illusive Man! I'm dying to know why he wants Sheperd dead and in one of the scans, someone mentioned a Cerberus Melee soldier. When's the realease date again? If it's during the month of December, Bioware will truly answer my birthday wishes.

Oh and this may be a stupid idea but I've always fancy Miranda to be my future wife for my Sheperd or Garrus if I'm a FemShep. Would be interesting to see the romance play out in ME3 given that our Sheperds have atleast f*cked somebody in ME1 and ME2. I want to marry my LI please...

CharmingCharlie

Bit miffed they haven't done anything new with Liara, from the scans we can still see that she is wearing the lab coat/armour from LotSB (hope the shadow broker ship has a washing machine). However on the other side of the coin she did get a make over in the DLC so probably wasn't worth their time re-doing her again so to speak.

As for release date, there is no official release date beyond "Holiday 2011". There have been some rumoured dates though, it seems 8th November (US) and 11th November (rest of the planet) seem to be the most frequent rumours. I wouldn't be surprised if we don't see it till January 2012 to be honest but you never know.

Now for a few spoilers a mod over at the Bioware forum has managed to see the captions under the screenshots in the mag. There is quite a bit of nice info (I have spoiler tagged the story spoilers:-

1) Humans aren't the only species that can be Husk-ified.

2) ME3 begins with Earth's assault by the Reapers, and things don't look so good, but there's something that is a silver lining, that makes it look like it's actually possible to not lose against the reapers .

3) TIM has sent his top agents to take down Shepard, The combat is going to be much harder and melee attacks are going to have more focus.

4) Shooting specific armor parts can have certain effects, and the AI of the enemies will have them routing Shepard and will coordinate with each other

5) Battlefields are going to be a great deal larger, and combat will be very varied.

6) Enemy Weapons can be PICKED UP. Soldiers can carry all kinds of weapons, and other classes understandably less so.

7) There is a larger skill tree and RPG aspects are going to be more integrated.

8) You will begin ME3 with most of your powers from ME2, that will get evolved in different ways later on

9) Weapon Modding is a greenlight, with things like barrels and scopes

10) Modding your weapons will vastly affect their appearance and how they function in battle

11) So far the CONFIRMED SQUADMATES are: Ashley/Kaiden, Liara, Garrus, and James Sanders who is mentioned is an Alliance Marine

12) Levels will have ladders

13) Available Squadmates will still maintain a balance, if per say Garrus had not survived ME2's events

14) ME1's Decisions such as sparing the Rachni will have a grave impact in ME3

15) There's no railroad to the end of the game, there are multiple paths to take back Earth

DOOM!

So I was looking through the BioWare forums in the GI thread and someone who has the Magazine said this:Only other thing I realized I left out is that they watched a video of a segment involve a krogan vehicle train with Shepard riding along, and as it goes a Reaper comes down from the sky to attack. Shepard's vehicle is destroyed, and fighting the thing is impossible on foot. Then a Thresher Maw comes out of the ground and attacks the Reaper. The Thresher gets the upper hand by coiling itself around the Reaper, then drags it underground. It gets quiet, and seems to be over, then laser fire begins erupting from the ground, and Shepard decides this is not a good place not to be.That sounds f*cking epic.

I am so looking forward to this, plus with a bunch of the ME1 and ME2 cast coming back it's gonna be ace, i just hope they add in some new people too.

Holy sh*t that does sound f*cking epic.

Rachni husks does not bode well for shepard, remember how tough those sh*ts were in ME1? Maybe we'll get some Rachni vs Rachni Husks action if you saved them in ME1.

I never found the Rachni difficult to kill, as long as I had the toxin mod in my suit, I was ace. Although, the Lady Benezia part almost made me quit Mass Effect. sh*t was more difficult than constipation.

Already have the pre-ordered. I was there midnight for Mass Effect 2, I will be for Mass Effect 3 aswell.

Minic

Already have the pre-ordered. I was there midnight for Mass Effect 2, I will be for Mass Effect 3 aswell.

I pre-ordered mine the other day too, but I'll most likely get it the day before it's released, I did with ME2.

Reading through those scans from Game Informer has made me want ME3 so much more now, the amount of changes they're doing, like as paps mentioned Ladders (HELL YEAH LADDERS!), and the variations of Husks we'll be seeing now like Rachni ones or Turian ones etc.It's gonna be a fantastic game, plus the features they're adding in to make it more like an RPG again are brilliant, I can't wait.

CharmingCharlie

Some new information has surfaced via a Spanish magazine so thought I would post it here for those interested. I have spoil tagged those that I think are "spoilerific" but if you don't want to know anything then ignore this post. In case you are wondering the spoilers deal with Cerberus motives, locations in the game, info on the reapers and info on enemies you find in the game so don't highlight those if you don't want to know :-

The reason that Cerberus is put against us is explained at the beginning of the adventureReapers: they have different sizes, ranging from 500-600 meters of the smaller ships to the 2km for Herald.New skills for Shepard: launched in search of coverage to Max Payne, rolling, jumping small holes in the ground, as the SWAT turn and strike the enemy with greater variety of melee attacks. It specifically mentions "a new class: Heavy Melee" take advantage of these capabilities of combat.New skills: Engineer can build turrets.Customizable Weapons, guns, sight ... five variants in each section.More items to "loot."Space Battles? Perhaps, but unconfirmed.Scenarios: larger. We will see people walking, ships fighting, architecture in greater detail. Searching for the photorealism of the sites using new lighting techniques on the stage. It has also improved the atmosphere and the number of dynamic elements of the stage, increasing interactivity with the player.Locations to visit: New York, London, a moon of ┐Koriana? (maybe they mean Quarian or Krogan) world, a salarian world and Mars, among others. The development of each environment takes about 6 months, testing the levels from the outset.Enemies: we can do dynamic damage into them. The Cerberus mechas, for example, requires that we shoot a weak point, the glass cockpit in order to overcome them. In other enemies we can cut off the arms, break the head or break various pieces of their armors.Fighting more dynamic, forcing us to move more frequently. The game speed is improved by 10 to 15%.Exploration: we won't drive vehicles seen in previous games. The main gameplay is designed without them and will continue so. This does not mean that there is no vehicle, but they can't reveal more now. There is a new scanning system.

Game Informers companion website also has a Mass Effect 3 hub with some interesting "non-spoiler" stuff on if anyone is interested :-

CharmingCharlie

That is a shame. I had hoped keeping the Collector base would change the composition of your 'final army' in ME3. Guess not.

Why am I not surprised you kept the collector base that is just such a "jelly" thing to do . I don't think we can rule that ME 2 choice out of the game just yet, Bioware seem pretty determined to ensure all your decisions do affect ME 3. Yeah yeah I know ME 1 decisions did sweet f*ck all in ME 2 but this time it is the last game so it will be a lot easier to have your previous decisions affect the game.

BTW I should have put up a link to the article those screenshots came from, my bad. You can read the article here :-

I have also tidied up the first post of this topic, added the screen shots. I will try and keep the first post as "spoiler" free as possible. If you feel the first post needs anything else feel free to say.